In the governance of Aboriginal Tasmanians in education, this dynamic revolves around the intersection of the dominant discourse imagining Aboriginality, contrary colonialist discourses, other competing ‘official storylines’ (Grundy, 1994), the performance of those discourses by individual deliverers of service, the Aboriginal political manipulation of their representation in policy and the performances of Aboriginal individuals under the influence of these manipulations. These are the elements of the discursive meaning-making machinery from which the subaltern subject imagined in policy ultimately emerges.